Lessons from murder reduction in Boston

The Boston Globe has an article, "What makes Boston so safe? Black pastors have different theories," updating the "Boston Miracle," because murders currently are below the five year average at this time the previous years.

The Boston Miracle ("Straight Outta Boston," Mother Jones, 2006) involves collaboration across nonprofits, churches, police and other government agencies, work with communities and on the street, to significantly cut the murder rate.  It's smaller in Boston than in cities like DC and Baltimore with comparable populations.

-- Policing in Boston webpage, Christopher Winship, Harvard
-- "How Boston became the safest big city in America," Economist
-- "Expanding the 'Boston Miracle,'" Boston Globe

Those collaborations haven't stopped as the murder rate dropped, they've continued--one such meeting has been held weekly for 30+ years.  No one has come up with the "one answer" on what has changed the trajectory.  One suggestion is of gentrification and displacement of potential shooters.  But that hasn't been as much of a factor in DC, which has a great deal of it.

Participants arrived for a weekly peace walk organized by the 10,000 Fearless Peacemakers. Photo: Taylor Coester for The Boston Globe.

The article starts out discussing Nation of Islam Preacher Randy Muhammad, and how his community has a weekly walk on Mondays through the community.  

They come upon a group of people hanging out at the T Station.  If it were DC, it could easily erupt into a public wilding event.  Here, Preacher Muhammad talks and interacts with the group.

From the article:

He’s wearing a bright orange T-shirt emblazoned with a quote from Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who attracted controversy in years past for antisemitic, homophobic, and misogynistic rhetoric. The quote itself is unobjectionable: “Making our communities safe & decent places to live.”

The idea behind events such as the peace walk is to build a rapport with community members, he said. That way, when it comes to disputes that could end in violence, his group can act as a neutral third party. “We offer an exit ramp,” said Muhammad. Oftentimes, he said, “we’re the only voice of deescalation.”

Not living in DC's poor neighborhoods anymore (H Street, 1980s-1990s), I don't know how much street presence there is of clergy and other committed community members.  

Community group involvement helps reduce crime.  Patrick Sharkey's book Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence credits the crime drop in part because of the rise of involvement of such organizations.  

I participated in one such group that was a response to the neighborhood center of crack dealing by Rayful Edmond's crew ("Rayful Edmond, Drug Lord Who Stoked D.C.’s Crack Cocaine Epidemic, Dies at 60," New York Times).  I also learned about how street design can help create protected areas conducive to drug dealing.

I know we had walks, I don't think we had weekly walks like Preacher Muhammad.  We did meet with the police precinct representatives every month at our meetings, among other government officials.  There was concern that people communicated some of what happened at the meetings to the drug dealers.

According to Crain's Chicago Business and their forum on the city's crime drop

Communities where nonprofits increased the most, such as those focusing on youth support and substance abuse programs, had lower crime rates. Community-based resources like this can also increase collective efficacy—social cohesion and trust among residents.

Also see "Nonprofit Crime Reduction," Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Our group and Preacher Muhammad's are congruent with "social efficacy theory" that posits more connected and involved communities, including the presence of a fair number of community organizations, have fewer social problems, despite income disparities. And Eric Klinenberg's discussion of the importance of social infrastructure in his book Palaces of the People.

Demographics are a factor.  The fact that Boston's murder rate is significantly lower compared to other cities means that they are doing something right, although part of it has to do with the rough percentage of black population in poverty.  For example, the black population in Boston is half that of DC, and one-third of Baltimore.  According to CNN:

The homicide rate for Black Chicagoans is nine times higher than for any other racial demographic, according to data released by the city Department of Public Health.

Differences in homicide rates by race account for significant differences in murder rates across cities.  E.g., Honolulu City and County with a population of one million--predominately Asian, and Asians having the lowest murder rate per capita--had 29 murders last year, which was a significant jump from 19 in 2024.

Summer always has a rise in crime and murder | Develop Summer Crime Suppression Strategies and Tactics.  Summer is known for an extranormal number of murders.  Focus resources on it.  That's the whole point of Broken Windows theory--focusing police time proactively not reactively, and addressing pattern crime ("Back from the Brink, an oral history of the introduction and implementation of Broken Windows theory policing in New York City").  Murders in the summer should be thought of as a pattern.

For example in Chicago 15 areas account for half the city's murders ("Chicago is throwing its ‘whole government’ at summer violence," CNN).  They focus resources on those "zones" with the most murders, bringing to bear all of the community's social infrastructure to address the problem.  DC knows where the murders are, I don't think they focus resources there.  Partly, because people in relatively safe areas still advocate for a high level of police presence.

Probably, there are more murders on weekends too, so that should be an area of focus.

Broken windows/physical improvements.  BW theory is two pronged.  One is refocusing police time and on crime suppression.  The other is investing in community--maintenance of public spaces like removing abandoned cars and in plantings, and working on keeping properties in good shape.  There have been studies in Philadelphia and elsewhere that find a positive reduction in crime in association with maintenance of vacant lots and conversion to community gardens.  Etc.

DC and Youth Crime.  Another area where DC seems to be an outlier is with youth crime, including violent crimes like murder, assault, and car jacking.  Having more community groups and preachers doing walks would be in order.

DC's youth crime and the failures of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services have been an issue for more than 30 years.  Truancy is an issue ("Empty desks: How the District’s failure to curb truancy in middle schools fueled the biggest youth crime surge in a generation," Washington Post).

After a significant decline in the program over the 2000s and 2010s, Midnight Basketball is back up to 20 chapters.  Photo: Clara Mokri for The New York Times.

Recreation centers and programs and later hours on weekends.   Curfews are one way cities deal with a rise in youth crime and group wilding in the summers ("Cities, towns nationwide revive teen curfews amid summer crowds," Indiana Capital Chronicle).  I think they can be one element in a toolbox.  But how about offering more programs for youth in the evening and at night.

Recreation centers and programs should be open later, until midnight or later on Friday and Saturday, and have a system of Teen Rangers to organize the programming so its relevant to the target audience ("Clark County to open 4 recreation centers for late-night teen programs," 3News Las Vegas).  From the article:

Four recreation centers across Clark County will begin offering free late-night programs for teenagers starting Tuesday as county officials and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police work to address rising concerns about youth violence and juvenile crime.

The summer initiative, which runs June 9- July 31, will keep Walnut Recreation Center, Whitney Recreation Center, Cambridge Recreation Center and the Torrey Pines Resource Center open from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. for teens ages 13 to 18.

I aver the centers should be open later than 11pm.  Libraries too.  In Montgomery County, Maryland, libraries in town centers like Silver Spring and Bethesda used to be open later on Friday and Saturday during the summers.  Not now.  But with focused involvement programming, such programs should be considered. 

Many of the recreation programs serve adults in their 20s as well,  ("Midnight Basketball Returns, and Brings Community With It," New York Times, National Midnight Basketball Association).

Summer Jobs and impact on crime.  The Wall Street Journal reports on a positive association between summer jobs and reduction in youth crime and murders ("The Effects of Summer Jobs on Youth Violence," "Why Teenagers Stopped Working in the Summer," Wall Street Journal).  From the article:

Sara Heller studied Chicago’s jobs program and found that an eight-week summer job cut violent-crime arrests among disadvantaged teenagers by 43%, with the effect growing after the job ended. Mr. Gelber and his co-authors, studying New York’s program, matched roughly 290,000 lottery records to tax and death records and found that winning a summer job cut the risk of dying over the following years by about 18%, driven by fewer homicides, particularly among young men. Those same New York jobs, however, didn’t raise the kids’ later earnings; if anything they nudged them down slightly and left college-going untouched.

How about Co-operative High School?  Given the results from summer employment, I've suggested offering the option of co-operative high school, where after freshman year youth are placed in paying jobs alongside classroom learning.  Such programs are uncommon.  

High Companies, a multifaceted firm with a foundation in welding and manufacturing supports three schools--two in Pennsylvania and one in Denver ("How Co-ops Help Young People Start Their Careers," High Companies).  Orillia Secondary School in Ontario also.St. George's Technical High School in Delaware.  And probably others.

Seniors only.  Charlevoix-Emmet Intermediate School District in Michigan offers co-op placements for senior, at more than 125 businesses, institutions, and nonprofits. Hodgson Vo-Tech in Delaware also only offers placements for seniors.

I do think as a crime reduction strategy, students from sophomore age schould be eligible for cooperative education.

What happens on Sunday when the 9th and 9th commercial district in Salt Lake doesn't have trash pick up on the weekends

 

This is so basic and something I have never understood.  Most people do their shopping from Friday to Sunday.  So you need more weekend service, not none.

Housing at hospitals as a benefit for longevity for the wealthy, and housing aimed at achieving health equity goals

Hospital adjacent housing for the well off.  A new hospital development in West Palm Beach, Florida will include mixed use retail and housing ("New Good Samaritan Hospital, with luxury housing and retail planned in West Palm Beach," South Florida Sun-Sentinel).  

The new hospital, which Tenet is calling a next-generation Center of Excellence for health care, will be part of a larger, mixed-use project by Easton Street Capital that will include luxury condominiums, rentals, retail and a hotel.

“We will be reimaging the Good Samaritan campus,” said Maggie Gill, group president of Tenet Healthcare. “In partnership with Easton Street Capital, we are redeveloping the site for housing, wellness and health care. This is a well-funded plan to make state-of-the-art health care facilities and technology more accessible to the region.”

...“The focus of the entire campus is a place where you can live, work and receive health care with an emphasis on wellness and longevity,” Gill said. “We think of it as an integrative approach to looking at the person holistically to help them stay healthy.”

... Housing will include rentals for the hospital workforce, as well as luxury condominiums to attract baby boomers seeking easy access to health care, an alternative to senior living. “I want to build longevity living where we’re trying to enhance the health span and the lifespan of the baby boomers,” Crowell said. “We think there will be buyers from around the country who come into this project.”

Also see "Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach plans massive redo," Palm Beach Post. 

I have been somewhat "down" on mixed use proposals like what the Coalition for Smart Growth wanted for the new Prince George's County hospital with the University of Maryland ("University of Maryland could seed a complementary biotechnology and medical education initiative in Prince George's County") because my experience doing some consulting in Pittsburgh was that hospitals pretty much are inward facing places--people don't have much time to eat off campus, shop, etc.  

According to my next door neighbor, a doctor, now, some hospitals even offer private dining facilities with meals prepared by a chef, for physicians.  Try to get them to go to a nearby diner...

However, I have written about the St. Anthony Hospital project in Chicago, which will have housing ("New St. Anthony Hospital to be part of $600 million development at former trade school site in Little Village," Chicago Sun-Times).

Finished affordable housing units for sale in Baltimore with a great interest rate and relatively low cost.

And how Bon Secours Hospital System in Baltimore has developed senior and affordable housing as a part of providing better living facilities for older patients ("Royal Farms, Y of Central Maryland join Saint Agnes' Gibbons Commons project," Baltimore Business Journal. Bon Secours Community Development).  

They have 800 units, plus 147 units in development.  That's a decent amount.

Separately, they are rehabilitating 20 vacant houses and will make them available for sale ("8 things to know: Health system revives 20 vacant West Baltimore homes," Baltimore Business Journal).  

Not a huge project, but given Baltimore's straits, a worthy one, and a risk where others seem to sit back.

Dunn House, Toronto.

And while slightly more oriented to the homeless, there are a couple initiatives in Toronto sparked by hospitals, where they provide housing to chronically homeless or health needy people, in large part because it's cheaper to treat them when they have housing, than when they don't ("This Toronto philanthropist has millions to spend. Here’s why she’s pouring it into the homelessness crisis," "These Toronto hospitals are quietly sheltering homeless patients themselves to avoid discharging them into the cold," "Jason Miles’ addiction cost $260,000 in emergency room, shelter and jail stays. A Toronto hospital’s radical solution: just give him a home," Toronto Star, "Toronto’s University Health Network Takes on the Housing Crisis," Azure).

More on longevity housing projects in Florida ("New condo concept blends real estate and wellness. The goal? Staying young," Sun-Sentinel). 

Florida already has become home to hundreds of medical providers and clinics that promote treatments to slow aging and combat aging-related conditions.

“There is so much interest in it right now,” said Zhe He, director of Florida State University’s Institute for Successful Longevity. Aging, he said, is becoming viewed as a potentially modifiable condition that could be improved with certain interventions. He said that loneliness or social isolation can contribute to aging, so this type of longevity-promoting community environment could in itself have health benefits.

Cromwell said about 300 units in Easton Street Capital’s luxury condominium building will be marketed for $5 million to $25 million each. “The pricing is going to be expensive, but we are also fortunate that the baby boomers have accumulated more wealth than any other generation, and now, as they’re 80, there are two things in their lives that are the most important,” Cromwell said. “One is family and two is living longer because they want to be with their family.”

To help fund the preventive care services, Cromwell said Easton Street Capital plans to sell longevity center memberships. “This allows the general public to come in to access some of these services to cover and drive down the costs to the residents.”

There is two projects, by THE WELL group.

In North Miami-Dade, a condominium with a similar concept is expected to open by the end of the month. THE WELL in Bay Harbor Islands has combined a wellness center with 66 condominium units and some workspace.

Kane Sarhan, co-founder and chief creative officer of THE WELL brand, said the wellness center in the condominium building has a full gym, a bathhouse with a steam room, an infrared sauna, and a cold plunge. There are treatment rooms for IV vitamin therapy and access to functional medicine doctors, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, skin care, acupuncture, physical therapy, and energy work. There is also an organic cafe and grocery store that offers meal programs, and a movement studio for yoga, meditation, and fitness classes.

... Further south in Coconut Grove, THE WELL is underway with a second location: a larger condominium building with 194 residences. The units are larger and more expensive, from $1.5 to more than $10 million, but the concept remains the same — residences combined with 13,000 square feet of fitness and wellness spaces. Like its other locations, the wellness center will include visits with functional medicine doctors, health coaches, nutritionists and massage therapists.

RN Melissa Shaw checked on an IV drip bag for client John Blazo.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff

It will be interesting to see if the "new age-y medicine stuff" which isn't research backed in terms of health benefits will feed into the hospital centric projects ("People are spending hundreds of dollars at IV drip bars in Boston. Are they worth the hype?," Boston Globe).

I had a colonoscopy last week and in talking with the doctor before the procedure, I was talking about people and their belief in things like "detoxing" your liver (I have some liver damage because of the various medicines I take).  We joked about it, and he said he's thought about creating a clinic that caters to that thinking--he'd make a lot of money from it, but he said he couldn't do it ethically.

Health equity and health-housing for the less well off.  The former examples are more about the well off wanting to live longer.  

But why not have housing on hospital campuses for the less well off, as a way to better achieve high ratings when it comes to "social determinants of health"? ("Health equity devolves to cities and states as the federal government cuts taxes for the wealthy").  

Bon Secours, hopefully Focal Point, and various workforce housing initiatives show a way forward, so that such services and benefits may not be limited only to the wealthy.

Austerity versus rot: Government capacity

The austerity neoliberal policy introduced into the US by Ronald Reagan took a long while to show serious repercussions.  I argued that impact of reducing government workers and capacity didn't show so much because the US had overinvested in capacity previously.

The failure of FEMA in dealing with the post-Katrina aftermath in New Orleans under George W. Bush was to me, the first glaring example of the impact of austerity.  Although this was accentuated by the agency having poor leadership as well.  (Since then FEMA has performed badly under Republican administrations, specifically Trump, "A Post-Katrina Law Guards FEMA Resources. Why Hasn’t It Stopped Noem?," New York Times.)

Writing in The Atlantic, "U.S. Capabilities Are Showing Signs of Rot," military historian Phillips O'Brien makes the point that firing capable officials, and installing ideologically acceptable but less skilled people in their place creates "Rot."  And that Rot is now very apparent in the US military, as shown by the performance in the current War against Iran.

Also in DHS under Noem, ICE ("Leaked Documents Show a Border Patrol Remade in the Image of Gregory Bovino," American Prospect), and the FBI, "How Kash Patel Wrecked FBI’s Ability to Stop an Espionage Attack," New Republic, among others. Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence during war time is another example of rot.  Richard Grenell at the Kennedy Center, most of the Secretaries in the Cabinet, etc.

The first Trump Administration's response to covid is another example of rot.  This rot has been deepened by appointing anti-medicine people in high positions at the FDA and CDC, and with RFK Jr.--who believes his voice dysphonia was caused by the flu vaccine--the Secretary of HHS!

WRT to war, sure the US and Israel can pummel Iran at will, but expending million dollar missiles to shoot down $50,000 drones is a cost-benefit ratio that is unsustainable.  Trump, who treats Ukraine like s***, has reached out to them for technical advice on dealing with drones.  In effect, Ukraine has provided more aid in dollar value to the US than Trump's Administration has provided to Ukraine as it fights Russia's invasion of the country.  (Fortunately, the US still shares intelligence with Iran.  But in general it does everything in its power to promote Russia.)

From the article:

On multiple occasions after President Trump launched a massive air campaign against Iran this past weekend, retaliatory attacks by simply constructed Iranian drones have penetrated American defenses with serious results. For example, at least six U.S. soldiers died, and others were wounded, in an Iranian strike Sunday on a command facility in Kuwait. CNN reported that the Americans received no warning of the incoming drone. According to CBS News, the fortifications around the facility protected it from car bombs but not from a direct overhead strike. “We basically had no drone defeat capability,” an unnamed military official told the network.

... When a complex system starts to decay, the first signs are usually subtle. In the third century, after the Roman empire had reached its geographic maximum, literacy began to decline across Roman society. Education levels fell not only among soldiers, but among officers, aristocrats, and even emperors. The Roman army still looked formidable for years afterward. It had good equipment and could march well. Yet it was no longer as advanced relative to Rome’s enemies as it had once been. It fought as hard as ever, but less effectively.

... The U.S. military’s supremacy over foreign rivals is built on intensive training and the manipulation of advanced technology. By contrast, Hegseth has been stressing lethality and a warrior ethos instead of learning and reflection, to the point of blocking U.S. military personnel from taking courses at the most elite American universities. Yet the events of the past week underscore how shows of force alone may not defeat even militarily inferior enemies.

In Bahrain, a lone Iranian drone penetrated the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which oversees 2.5 million square miles of the world’s oceans. The incoming weapon destroyed an AN/TPS-59 radar unit intended to provide 360-degree air surveillance for U.S. forces. In a moment, Iranian equipment that cost perhaps $30,000 devastated a piece of U.S. military hardware estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Another term for this is "capital shallowing" or disinvestment.  It's the opposite of "capital deepening" or investing ("Capital shallowing: the effect of disinvestment on government functioning").

DC Metrorail transit ridership by station, daily boardings

WMATA and other transit agencies make data available about ridership for rail systems and bus lines.  

It would be easy for them to also produce it as a matter of course like in the graphic below.  

Similarly, such data could be presented by bus stop for bus lines.

Having such data easily presented makes it a lot easier to have discussions about transit stations and bus stops, whether or not bus stops could be cut in order to speed service, and what stations to invest in to improve user experience and increase ridership.

Who maintains community/cluster mailboxes in Canada?

Canada Post, to lower costs, forced a shift to group mailboxes for neighborhoods.  This was criticized for a couple reasons, one being wrt historic neighborhoods, the appurtenances aren't particularly fitting architecturally.  

Suburban and new subdivisions are outfitted with the group mailboxes and have been since the 1980s ("Super mailboxes, 'second-class citizens' and mail inequality," CBC).

Thus far, city neighborhoods still get door to door service ("An opportunity — if Canada Post chooses to take it," Winnipeg Free Press).  

Back when the change in how to deliver mail was first contemplated, wrt snow, another point was raised that one of the motivators for people to shovel their sidewalks was so that mail could be delivered ("Canadian Postal Workers Battle to Save Door-to-Door Delivery," Labor Notes, 2014).

Here, it seems that Canada Post doesn't take responsibility for snow clearance around their group mailboxes.

Image from "Canada gets cluster-boxed: Why it can’t happen here," Save the Post Office.  This article also discusses calls to create similar cluster boxes or community mailboxes in the US.

Another issue is general maintenance, such as dealing with people discarding mail at the box.  

Apartment buildings without front desks often have a mass-mess of discarded mail on the floor below the mailboxes.  This can be an issue in Canada too.

Back from the Brink, an oral history of the introduction and implementation of Broken Windows theory policing in New York City

I have been remiss in reviewing Back from the Brink, the book by Peter Moskos that is an oral history of the New York City Police Department during the Bratton period, where new strategies and tactics were introduced to suppress crime in significantly measurable ways.  (I first mentioned the book last September, in "Murder rate in Chicago is bad: "correct" applications of broken window policing.")

Unfortuately, I have a bad habit of if I don't write the review as soon as I read the book, I'm not likely to get back to it, partly because I have another bad habit of writing my notes on various different pieces of paper, some get mislaid etc.

But the review of the book by Michael Fortner, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in Washington Monthly, "How New York City Got Safe: A historical reconstruction of the Big Apple’s crime decline, told from inside the institutions responsible for public safety," reminds me that it is important to do so.

A New York Subway car before Broken Windows policing practice was introduced in the late 1980s.

Fortner covers the book pretty well, but I think he misses some points.  

I lived in DC during the bad times in the 80s and 90s, and am a fervent believer in broken windows policing theory.  

In general, especially in progressive academia, it has a bad rep because most departments interpreted it as "zero tolerance policing" with a lack of focus on major crimes and the creation of a siege mentality by arresting people for the least transgression, like an unbuckled seatbelt (also see "Looking Through Broken Windows: The Impact of Neighborhood Disorder on Aggression and Fear of Crime Is an Artifact of Research Design" Annual Review of Criminology, "Why the Fraudulent 'Broken Windows' Theory of Policing Refuses to Die," Current Affairs).

What I got out of Moskos book are a few key things.  

First, the interviews make clear that Bratton and the top people believed that crime could be suppressed.  CompStat was about (re)focusing police time towards proactiveness.  "Cops on Dots" -- putting cops where crime is occurring--as some people called it.

Although as Fortner quotes one commander, it was a philosophy.  Moskos cites a cop talking about how they had a problem with bike-based robberies in his precinct and how it was addressed.  But others took out of CompStat meetings about their approach that they should "arrest more bicyclists" rather than analyze whether or not bicycles were used repetitively in perpetrating crime.

Bratton's team believed that by addressing pattern crime, and arresting perpetrators crime would drop.  

While generally, the police department wasn't focused on "broken windows" or improving public spaces per se, the application of focused policing on the subway system was complemented by a refurbishment of subway stations and subway cars--not just buying new equipment--but by addressing graffiti, etc.

The book gives you a great picture of the effort and how it was incremental, building on each success, or adjusting after failure.  I really got a sense of the breadth and depth of the effort and the spirit of experimentation.  

The idea of "moving the success of broken windows from underground/the subways" to above ground wasn't just about the CompStat tracking system and delving deeply into crime patterns, precinct by precinct.  It was about making improvements in crime reduction and physical improvements very visible, which in turn led to more support for the Broken Windows Approach.

Two stories in particular cover the integration of policing with public space improvement were the campaigns to significantly improve the  Port Authority Bus Terminal and Bryant Park (although the program to improve BP began before the Bratton period of policing).  

People didn't used to go to Bryant Park, day or night.  Now it hums with activity.

But as the president of the subway system told Bratton during his interview "if we don't fix stations and subway trains in association with better policing people won't take the train," the success of Bryant Park likely would have taken much longer to come to fruition without better, focused policing in public parks and Bryant Park in particular.

Another element of public space improvement at the time had nothing to do with policing, but with the creation of business improvement districts, funded by local property tax surcharges, these groups provided extranormal cleaning services, public space improvements and monitoring (Jane Jacobs style "eyes on the street") in places like Times Square and around Penn Station.

And the proof is in the pudding.  Sure multiple cities had significant crime drops starting in the late 1990s.  But eg DC versus NYC.  NYC had a 75% drop in homicides, DC 38%.  I'm sure this quantum difference in results between NYC and other cities was across the board in other crime categories.

Living in DC at the time, there weren't many broken windows approaches, but there was a focus on involving neighborhood groups, the way that Patrick Sharkey in Uneasy Peace attributes some of the fall in crime during that period to civic and collective action ("George Kelling, co-creator of the "Broken WIndows" thesis, dies," 2019).

I myself participated in one such neighborhood group that was started in response to a major drug distribution area, and over (a long) time the problem was cured.  

Cops came to monthly meetings, problems were discussed, there were occasional walks with police and elected officials, etc.  (I also did small BW experiments in my neighborhood, with litter pick up and measurement of its impact on certain streets and in bus shelters.)

A blog reader once made the point that as crime dropped, maybe stop and frisk was in part a response of needing something to do, but with the lack of restraints applied during the post Bratton Guiliani years (although Bratton in his later stint did support stop and frisk; later he recanted) it became a big problem.  

Obviously, Stop and Frisk was proven to be not productive.  Unlike the value of arresting fare jumpers and checking them for outstanding warrants, an early initiative of Bratton's on the subway system, less than 2% of the people stopped under Stop and Frisk had outstanding warrants.  

They were stopping people without reasonable suspicion or probable cause and it showed in the data.  Whereas fare jumping is a crime, and jumpers often perpetrate other crimes, on the subway system and off it.

So for me, the biggest issue with BW is that it hasn't really been applied in a true fashion in very many places.  And with how the Bratton people were pushed out by Giuliani, my lesson from DC is that you can't ever stop being vigilant when it comes to crime and order versus disorder.  Once disorder returns it's hard to reverse.

The rise in social justice concerns, deserved somewhat in response to structural racism, as crime dropped and fewer elected officials and academics had direct experience of the mess of disorder during the worst of 1990s, did lead to a rise in crime in places like DC ("The Coming D.C. Crime Boomerang," Atlantic), as crime decriminalization was seen by perpetrators not as a social justice move to help them because they were "driven to crime because of life circumstances," but as a signal to commit more crime (see the argument, by extension here, "The role of physical environment in the ‘broken windows’ theory," University of Chicago)

BART's new fare gates, seen at the Coliseum station in 2025, have generated more money for the transit agency. Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle

BART and fare gates. Recently there was a super interesting BW finding in SF with BART stations with new fare evasion resistant gates ("BART’s long fight against fare evasion is finally paying off. Here’s how much," San Francisco Chronicle).  

Not only did rider attitudes improve, ridership and fare revenue grew, and instances of vandalism dropped significantly.  Like Bratton said, turnstile jumpers commit other crimes.  If they aren't on the subway because they didn't pay, well, then there is less likelihood for vandalism of subway infrastructure.

Note that NYC and DC subways ("Metro’s new, higher faregates reducing fare evasion by more than 70 percent"), and St. Louis and Minneapolis light rail ("Transit safety and security: Broken Windows theory and reality | and the state of transit safety today," 2023) are also implementing new fare gates to reduce fare evasion.

Playgrounds and cafes were some of the positive use spaces added to the area.   Photo:  Jessie Cooper and Justin Roth embrace on a swing at a playground at Civic Center in San Francisco, California, on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Revival of BART's Civic Center station.  Predating the fare gate program, the BART Civic Center Station became a center for nuisance and crime including drug dealing, where the main two block "entryway" to the station became a gauntlet where drug dealing, loitering, and quality of life offenses blossomed..  

Above-ground, the City of San Francisco invested in improving the public realm on those two blocks and beyond, adding new facilities and refurbishment to encourage more positive use of the space, while below ground BART made complementary station-specific improvements.  

Media coverage of the project makes clear that the effort involved police and multiple other partners including philanthropy, physical interventions and ongoing programming ("SF Civic Center’s new vision: soccer fields, shaded gardens and people," "SF Civic Center — cleaner and safer — now a place to play and have a bite," "Rejuvenating SF Civic Center Plaza: a challenge beyond design," San Francisco Chronicle). 

While the area’s transformation remains a work in progress, the differences are stark. In addition to two new playgrounds that cost $10 million, the space hosts a growing number of public events, including outdoor concerts, art installations and food-truck gatherings. A winter park — complete with a 6,000-square-foot ice rink — is set to open next month.

BART has developed a station modernization program equally focused on reducing public safety issues.

The Station Modernization Program focuses on increasing safety, capacity, sustainability, appearance, and enhancing the customer experience: 

• Vibrancy-- Reflect the energy of the surrounding community and enhance the station’s existing strengths 
• Connectivity – Strengthen multi-modal and universal access to the station and promote a safe and comfortable customer experience 
•  Sustainability – Incorporate sustainable materials and technologies into the station to increase the life-cycle value of the station’s infrastructure and to conserve natural resources and protect the public investment. 

Residents hope a similar program can be developed to improve the environment and public safety elements at the 16th Street-Mission Station ("Can BART bring a Civic Center-style revival to another dilapidated S.F. station?," SFC).   But in contrast to the Civic Center project, they seem to be focusing more on BART, and less on engaging other agencies into creating a broader response.

There not thinking either multiplicatively, nor in terms of below ground versus above-ground improvements.

 “If you really think about it, this is the living room of the Mission,” he said. “And the BART station is the front door. The first impression you have of the neighborhood is coming through the fare gate and up that escalator.”

As discussed in the 2013 entry "Transit, stations, and placemaking: stations as entrypoints into neighborhoods," transit stations are entry points--porches or living rooms--to neighborhoods.  While transit systems typically don't plan them that way, it is a responsibility that goes beyond the transit agency, and should require ongoing coordination and planning with the local jurisdiction.

Managing to prevent disorder is an ongoing process.  The final lesson with BW in NYC is that it requires constant vigilance too.  That it's hard to maintain because people get burned out.  But also when elected officials want the credit, they push out the top cops who bring the changes about.  That definitely happened in NYC.  Most of the top implementers of BW at NYPD were gone within a few years of Bratton's departure.  Although fortunately, further down the ranks were commanders, inspectors, and captains who had been (re)trained to the approach, embedded the precepts, and continued to implement the BW approach of proactive crime suppression.

Covid-related uptick in crime.  Although yes, things tipped the other way during the covid pandemic, in NYC and nationally "Explaining the COVID Violence Spike and the Roaring Crime Decline").  Although today, in most places reported crime including murders, has dropped significantly.

Police officers and detectives enter the crime scene area where a 9-year-old boy was fatally shot. Photo: John J. Kim, Chicago Tribune

Chicago.  Chicago is an outlier nationally, in that the city that has continued to have high murder rates, although they are dropping, despite purportedly adopting BW approaches ("End-of-Year Analysis: Chicago Crime Trends," U of Chicago Crime Lab).   More recently, the city has had success with crime reductions in association with community intervention programs.

In a past blog entry, I opined that they probably aren't doing BW very well, have many high profile negative incidents that indicate systemic problems with management, and that a high rate of financial settlements for police misconduct, fatal errors, etc. indicates, from a risk management standpoint, that they have a serious crime problem.  Although more recently, like Baltimore ("Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott discusses how the city has brought violent crime down," NPR, "Baltimore has cut homicides by almost 60 percent in five years," Washington Post) they seem to be having effect with violence interruption programs.

Also see:

"The federal help Chicago really needs," Crain's Chicago Business

At the University of Chicago Crime Lab, we have spent over fifteen years studying which interventions actually reduce gun violence and maximize the impact of government spending. We think we’ve found a clear path forward: Build the capacity of police commanders managing jurisdictions with the highest rates of violence. The Policing Leadership Academy has a simple premise — treat policing as a profession using the formula that has had tremendous success for private sector companies: investing in people’s leadership and management skills.

Also see "Policing and management," NBER, which makes the point about how the use of management time shapes outcomes positively or negatively.

Downtowns versus neighborhoods as a revitalization conundrum | Detroit

Hudson’s Detroit, the Motor City’s first new skyscraper in nearly half a century, is a symbol of Detroit’s transformation from bankruptcy to boomtown.  Photo: Steven King/Icon Sportswire.

I wrote about Detroit a few weeks ago ("Dan Gilbert and the state of Detroit revitalization | phases") and CNN has s similar story, "Detroit is back from the dead. But not everyone is feeling it."

CNN references a report (Allowing the Detroit DDA’s Captured Tax Revenues to Again Fund Government Services, Citizens Research Council of Michigan) on the city's economic development and tax policies from the bankruptcy in 2013 to today, and generally finds

• that while there has been plenty of economic development, the costs still have been greater than the benefits
• that the creation of downtown development authorities in Michigan was a good thing because it provided for a dedicated stream of local revenue to support economic development without impinging on other revenue streams
• but it does come at the cost of lost tax revenues for other government authorities like school systems and counties
• that in Detroit, the primary focus on downtown revitalization as being justified to bring revenues to neighborhood improvements hasn't been realized.

View of Downtown's Renaissance Center office complex from the window of a vacant industrial building.  Photo: Jeff Kowalsky, Bloomberg/Getty Images.

I think this is true sure, but like I write about economic impact studies of transit needing a thirty year or longer time frame to truly be able to measure results, the same goes for revitalization of a cities like Detroit, Pontiac, St. Louis, Oakland, etc.

In the words of the Doors song, "Been Down So Long":

… Well, I've been down so Goddamn long

That it looks like up to me 

Well, I've been down so very damn long

That it looks like up to me 

Yeah, why don't one you people 

C'mon and set me free

The current time frame of 12 years for generating conclusions and making recommendations shouldn't be seen as an endpoint but a midpoint.

From the report:

Wellbeing of the City

The idea of “two Detroits” is rooted in part in the perception that the CBD (and midtown) has prospered by channeling property tax revenue back into economic development activities while the balance of the city, including the neighborhoods, have suffered from the lack of investment and economic struggles.

This narrative existed before bankruptcy but has become more acute since.

It is clear that downtown and midtown have fared better than many of the neighborhoods. While abandoned houses have been demolished throughout the city, new buildings have been constructed downtown. Downtown has had a level of vibrancy that is not present in many other parts of the city.

Likewise, it is clear that investments in the downtown have not lifted the city to share in any levels of prosperity. Hopes that investments in downtown would lead to housing nearby and throughout the city have not been experienced except for anecdotal recent developments. 

It is not the DDA’s duty to save the whole city and many factors contributed to the exodus of people, including crime, auto insurance rates, the struggling school system, and the high cost of construction throughout the city.

Rebalancing a Downtown focus vis a vis neighborhood improvements.  In some respects the text reminded me of the point that Rolf Goetze makes in Building Neighborhood Confidence, that the point of focused public investments in neighborhoods (or Downtowns) is to reorient the neighborhood trajectory so that residents once again are confident to make investments on their own.  

Detroit.  Rock City.

In Detroit, while there is tremendous investment as mentioned in my blog entry, as massive as it is, it hasn't been enough to hit critical mass so that the private sector is the predominate investment actor.  In Detroit, the DDA, the State of Michigan, and private foundations remain heavily involved.

I think that even though Downtown improvement requires still more resources, a reset is required to simultaneously pursue more focused neighborhood efforts, even though there is already so much going on at that level already, with improvements in the functioning of the County Land Bank and neighborhood revitalization programs--to me, it's an astounding amount of action and involvement.

Vacant houses are shown in Detroit, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011. Wrecking crews in the Detroit are well on their way to knocking down 3,000 vacant and abandoned homes promised by Mayor Dave Bing. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

One of the problems is that there is only so much population in-migration going on.  Sure the city has added 7,000 residents the first gain in a long time.  But that's equal to about 1% of the city's population.  

It's not nearly enough to power residential development in Downtown or in key neighborhoods.

Another problem is just how much vacant and abandoned land there is, many dozens of square miles, an area larger than the City of San Francisco.

Still, residents need more skin in the game to feel like they are part of the process, that their long term sacrifice has meaning, that their communities are receiving visible benefits, that all the benefits aren't going to just the Greater Downtown.

While that might slow Downtown momentum some, at the same time the whole could be greater than the current sum of the parts.  I've drawn an outline of such a program for St. Louis, which is worth considering.

-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 1: Overview and Theoretical Foundations"
-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 2: Implementation Approach and Levers"

Another concept is leveraging the development of the Purple Line light rail program in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland, both wrt transit and revitalization improvements.

-- "Codifying the complementary transit network improvements and planning initiatives recommended in the Purple Line writings," (2022)

-- Setting the stage for the Purple Line light rail line to be an overwhelming success: Part 1 | simultaneously introduce improvements to other elements of the transit network (2017)
-- Part 2 |   the program (macro changes) (2017)
-- Part 3 |   influences (2017)
-- Part 4 |   Making over New Carrollton as a transit-centric urban center and Prince George's County's "New Downtown" (2017, originally 2014)
--PL #5: Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District"
- Part 1: Setting the stage
- Part 2: Program items 1- 9
- Part 3: Program items 10-18
- Part 4: Conclusion
- Map for the Silver Spring Sustainable Mobility District
- (Big Hairy) Projects Action Plan(s) as an element of Comprehensive/Master Plans
- Creating the Silver Spring/Montgomery County Arena and Recreation Center
 -- Part 6 |  Creating a transportation development authority in Montgomery and Prince George's County to effectuate placemaking, retail development, and housing programs in association with the Purple Line (2017)
-- Part 7 | Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward (2017)
-- Revisiting the Purple Line article series after one year: Part 1 | a couple of baby steps (2018)
-- Revisiting the Purple Line (series) and a more complete program of complementary improvements to the transit network (2019)

Basically it's what I call Transformational Projects Action Planning, at the neighborhood scale ("S").

There are a few other best practice programs in action models to draw from.

Hennepin County Community Works 20 Years of Transforming Places for People

Hennepin Community Works.  When I was reading about how and why Downtown Development Authorities were created in Michigan, as a strategy to stoke city renewal, I couldn't help but think of Hennepin County, Minnesota's creation of a revitalization program in recognition that continued population leakage in Minneapolis was a serious threat to the county tax base.

Hennepin did an analysis of Minneapolis, and identified the factors that separated the stable neighborhoods from those that were declining.  They created a revitalization program focused on Minneapolis, to turn declining neighborhoods into successful and stable ones.  This journal article, 

"A COUNTY AND ITS CITIES: THE IMPACT OF HENNEPIN COMMUNITY WORKS," Journal of Urban Affairs (2006), describes the program.  What they found is that housing in areas by parks, rivers, and lakes retained the most value.

Faced in the nineties with a growing imbalance between the declining prosperity of its core city (Minneapolis) and suburban municipalities, Hennepin County, Minnesota, pioneered a different path. In 1994, Hennepin County launched an urban redevelopment program, “Hennepin Community Works” (hereafter HCW) that clearly supplemented the more common models of county activity. HCW devised an entirely new redevelopment role for the county, and has consequently had a major impact on Minneapolis and its suburbs. 

Since its inception, Hennepin County commissioners have committed close to $200 million of infrastructure spending into a targeted redevelopment program with five goals: (1) to enhance the tax base; (2) to reshape troubled neighborhoods; (3) to improve transportation within the county; (4) to protect and develop green space; and (5) to create new jobs. While much of the U.S. urban past since the eighties has featured decreasing levels of public sector funding and involvement with urban affairs, Hennepin County voluntarily took on substantial additional financial and political commitments with this program

... HCW began here in 1994 as a public works program initially intended to address declining property values. Since then, HCW has significantly transformed portions of the county through major housing, transportation, parks, and environmental restoration investments. Through 2008, HCW launched nineteen projects, totaling $197.5 million in investments.

Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program.  Separately, the City of Minneapolis developed the Neighborhood Revitalization Program, which sold TIF bonds on Downtown revitalization to raise $20 million per year for 20 years directed to neighborhood improvements (case study, "The Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program: An Experiment in Empowered Participatory Governance," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, "Citizen-driven program led to more housing, stronger commercial corridors and better public infrastructure in Minneapolis," MinnPost).  

Neighborhood associations were tasked with working with city agencies like the School System and Parks Board to make improvements.  Early into the program, they realized that most neighborhood associations lacked the technical capacity to lead the effort, so they developed a strong technical assistance program so residents could develop the expertise to successfully create and implement projects.  From the MinnPost:

The NRP drastically altered the landscape of neighborhood associations in Minneapolis. What were once underfunded, small groups that relied primarily on volunteer labor transformed almost overnight into organizations that had the financial resources to enact dramatic change in their neighborhoods. Overall, neighborhoods used just under half of their allocated NRP dollars to construct housing projects — in many cases affordable housing projects.

The third largest allocation of funds went towards economic development and efforts that aimed to revitalize commercial corridors and help support local businesses. The results show that neighborhoods channeled funding in a way that mirrored neighborhood needs, meaning investment was sensitive to the local context. The bottom-up design of the NRP led to increases in housing stock, revitalization of many key commercial corridors, improvement of public infrastructure such as parks and schools, and increases in the institutional capacity of many neighborhood associations.

This book discusses the MAP program in depth.

Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area Projects.  This is a little different.  OKC is more than 3x larger than Detroit.  So while it is funding "metropolitan" projects, they are limited to the boundaries of the city.  MAP is an impressive system that's been through a few rounds.  

Each round puts investments into major community improvements from the riverfront, recruiting an NBA basketball team by building an arena, to school physical sites, the beginnings of a streetcar network, etc. ("Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape," "Civic culture and organization as an element of community economic resilience").

Detroit's MAP so to speak is what it is doing downtown.  By contrast, it would be interesting to create a MAP 4 Neighborhoods just like the second phase MAP in OKC was MAPs 4 Kids on improving schools.

Other transformational project models include

• Bilbao ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning")
• Liverpool ("Liverpool regeneration as a process for regaining relevance at the regional, national, and global scales")
• Downtown Edmonton's focus on cultural asset development ("Downtown Edmonton cultural facilities development as an example of "Transformational Projects Action Planning"")
• Germany's International Building Exhibition and International Garden Festival revitalization programs ("Hamburg, urban design, and placemaking: big vision, big projects")
• Helsinki's Arabianranta district ("Developing Creative Quarters in Cities: Policy lessons from “Art and Design City Arabianranta, Helsinki," Urban Research and Practice) 
• Portland's developments in transportation and urban design ("Talk by Congressman Earl Blumenaur on "The Portland, Oregion urban revitalization story"")

• Kansas City's streetcar development ("Kansas City Streetcar’s extension is open! Now you can ride from River Market to UMKC for free," KCUR/NPR, "'I was so wrong': Main Street shop says KC Streetcar brought more business than expected," KHSB-TV, "Years before KC streetcar expansion on Main St., development begins to boom in Midtown," Kansas City Star, "UMKC Proposing Student Housing, Retail by Planned Streetcar Terminus," Flatland).  They use a special tax district on properties within 1/3 of a mile of the line to pay for operations.
• etc.  

Luis Hernesto Holguin, left, and his sister Resfa Holguin use outdoor escalators, newly installed at Comuna 13 shantytown as part of an urbanization plan to improve living conditions of residents, in Medellín. (AP Photo/Luis Benav)

Social urbanism as another approach to neighborhood revitalization: Medellín.  Social urbanism is an initiative launched by Medellín, Colombia, to improve neighborhoods and public safety by investing in civic assets like parks and libraries, urban design, new schools, and better transportation connectivity such as public escalators and gondolas in extremely hilly areas, to bike share to finish or begin a transit trip.  

Improvements include a reduction in murders by about 90%--likely, even in the face of the pandemic, crime and murders would have dropped, neighborhoods and life circumstances and achievements would have improved.  

Top-notch amenities like parks and libraries have been placed in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Photo credit: Jorge Gobbi via Flickr

Social urbanism isn't suggested here to deal with public safety so much as to focus neighborhood investments.

-- "Experiments in Social Urbanism"
-- "'Social urbanism' experiment breathes new life into Colombia's Medellin Toronto Globe & Mail
-- "Medellín's 'social urbanism' a model for city transformation," Mail & Guardian
-- "Medellín slum gets giant outdoor escalator," Telegraph
-- "Medellín, Colombia offers an unlikely model for urban renaissance," Toronto Star-- 
-- "Latin America’s New Superstar," NextCity

Climate change makes "ordinary living" a lot more risky

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This is mostly "old" writing that was in the draft folder, from 2022.

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Remember those Parkay Margarine ads? "You can't fool Mother Nature."

1.  Waterfront development.  The New York Times asks why are we still building on waterfronts, given sea level rise ("Why Is New York Still Building on the Waterfront?").  I have to admit I push waterfront based revitalization initiatives and don't always think about this.

The answer: people want to live on the water and it makes money.

Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images. An aerial image shows the only access to the Matlacha neighborhood destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Fla., on Sept. 30, 2022.

2.  Hurricane and Superstorm prone areas.  Florida.  The Times reports that many people can't afford to rebuild in the face of Hurricane Ian.  

And Florida actually improved its building codes, making them stronger in dealing with the effects of hurricanes, albeit that was when the state was run by Democrats ("South Florida, Tulsa, and Santa Fe as examples of regulatory success and Texas as an example of regulatory failure").  The problem is that as hurricanes become more powerful, those building codes need to be extended across the state.

-- To Save America's Coasts, Don't Always Rebuild Them"
-- "Rethinking Building in Storm-Prone Areas"
-- "Three Ways to Build Back Smarter After Hurricane Ian"
-- "Hurricane Ian's Financial Toll Threatens Florida's Real Estate Market"

3.  Casualty insurance.  Plus, most for profit insurers are leaving Florida, leaving the property insurance market to a state owned insurer of last resort, which can never be capitalized to the rate necessary to cover likely risks ("Will 2022 bring the collapse of the Florida homeowners insurance market?," Bankrate).

... I used to get angry when a person involved in selling insurance argued against creating historic districts in DC because the houses wouldn't be able to get insurance.  I would say, "what about Georgetown, Dupont Circle, Capitol Hill, etc.?"

But it would definitely be a lot higher if there were regular risks from weather. 

New York City.  The Times reports, "‘If We Wait, People Will Die’: New Yorkers Still Fend for Themselves in Storms," on how residents in Greater New York are taking steps to protect themselves in the face of severe rains, flooding, Superstorms, Hurricanes, etc. Especially as the effects are not limited to those abutting rivers and waterfronts.  From the article:

Whatever lessons had been learned after Sandy, which brutalized the area with storm surges, coastal flooding and widespread power outages, they didn’t prepare people for the storm risk that Hurricane Ida exposed: flash floods intensified by climate change, and aging sewage systems that cannot absorb storm water fast enough. In the aftermath of Ida, policymakers are still grappling with blind spots in their post-Sandy recovery plans, and homeowners and renters are wondering what, if anything, they can do to protect themselves from rapidly deteriorating conditions. ...

“Our structures are a lot more vulnerable than we thought,” said Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor and the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. “The challenge is more extensive than we recognized, it’s going to cost more than we budgeted, and it’s more urgent than we expected.”

In hindsight, Sandy stands as a book end — the beginning of an era of stronger and deadlier storms, capped a year ago by Ida, a Category 4 hurricane that managed to catch people unaware after making landfall days earlier in Louisiana.

 (We had to add a second sump pump to our DC house, after the terrible rain event a couple years ago, where as much as 5 inches of rain fell in less than an hour in Northwest DC and Montgomery County.  Our area is a little worse because there's an undergrounded creek which leads to a high water table.)

Also see "The Disaster to Come: New York’s Next Superstorm," NYT.

4.  Emergency management failures in Lee County, Florida led to more than 100 deaths ("Facing a Dire Storm Forecast in Florida, Officials Delayed Evacuation" and "Vulnerable and Trapped: A Look at Those Lost in Hurricane Ian," New York Times). "Thanks DeSantis."

Aerial view of the flooding of the Guadalupe River near Kerrville, Texas, on Saturday July 5th, 2025. Photo via U.S. Coast Guard/UPI

5.  Speaking of "if we wait, we will die," that's what happened in Texas earlier this year, with river flooding ("Why Texas Hill Country, where a devastating flood killed more than 135 people, is one of the deadliest places in the US for flash flooding," The Conversation, "24 dead in Texas floods and more than 20 children missing from a girls summer camp," AP).  

Despite past experience with bad flooding, local authorities punted on funding emergency warning systems, partly because they didn't want to spend the money, even with grants as part of the funding mix.  Emergency siren systems are more effective in the middle of the night when people are mostly asleep, and when the flooding happened ("Texas state leaders call for more sirens, flood gauges and mitigation efforts," Texas Tribune).

6.  Wildfire.  Oregonians aren't happy about having to cover the cost of wildfire risk ("Oregon tried to inform residents about wildfire risk. The backlash was explosive," Grist Magazine). From the article:

Last summer, after a series of devastating wildfires, the Oregon state legislature passed a sweeping bipartisan bill to protect against future blazes. The law unlocked money to develop new building codes in vulnerable areas and help residents who wanted to fireproof their homes. It reached the governor’s desk with support from Portland-area Democrats and rural Republicans alike.

Before state officials could implement the new regulations, though, they needed to figure out which areas faced the greatest fire danger. For this reason, the bill required the state forestry department to create a comprehensive wildfire risk map within a year, assigning a risk score to every household in the state. The forestry department finished the map right on time in June. It then mailed a letter to every homeowner who was in a high-risk zone, alerting them that new regulations would be coming soon.

The first version of the Oregon Wildfire Risk Explorer map, published earlier this year. The state retracted the map after public outcry. Oregon Wildfire Risk Explorer

This seemingly anodyne mapping measure produced a frenzy of backlash from every corner of the state. Hundreds of residents showed up at public meetings to berate state officials for designating their homes high risk, and hundreds more wrote in to contest their risk status. Many argued that the state was going to make their insurance more expensive and their property less valuable.

The same Republican lawmakers who had supported the wildfire bill then pounced on the map as an example of state overreach. In early August, the state caved and withdrew the map, vowing to spend another year gathering feedback before releasing a final version. In a tight race for state governor that will be decided next week, the Democratic candidate has distanced herself from the old version of the risk assessment, saying the revision “must address concerns from property owners.”

Like covid, fire pretty much ignores politics.

In Washington State, given federal cutbacks to the US Forest Service and Federal Emergency Management Administration, more wildfires are expected ("WA’s wildfire future: More volatile forests amid slashed budgets," Seattle Times). 

In 2019, Texas paid for billboards in California making fun of electricity shortages in the summer.

7.  Electricity.  With extreme cold and extreme heat, electricity demands are now high throughout the year, rather than peaking and dropping, with demand approaching the edge of capacity.

Supply failures are increasingly likely because of increased demand by Internet data centers ("AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring," Bloomberg, "Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone," New York Times, blog entry, "Data centers").

Hundreds of people died in Texas in 2021 because of utility failures in winter ("Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure").  And it turned out that when electricity fails, so do water systems, furthering the negative impacts of the failures.

Drought and power generation.  Note that in the West, where a majority of federal dams generating electricity are located, drought is making it tougher for the dams to be able to generate electricity in the face of water levels dropping below water entranceways for the generating systems ("Lake Powell forecasts show hydropower generation is at risk next year as water levels drop," Colorado Sun).

8.  Extreme heat and deaths.  Communities in hot regions are experiencing a lot more heat-related deaths in the summer, as a result of extreme temperatures having disproportionate effects on those of lesser means. 

More cities are appointing "chief heat officers" to plan for and address the effects ("Planning for heat/climate change | Public health" and "Climate change is already here in many US communities | "Heat Officers" versus Climate Change Officers").

Columbia South Carolina has a pilot program measuring heat islands ("Scientists look for help to exactly measure Columbia’s heat," AP).

9.  Flooding and impact on stormwater and water treatment infrastructure.  Rain events are a lot stronger than they were when most communities built their stormwater capture infrastructure.  Now it is common for the piping to be overwhelmed during storms.  

In 2022, rain-related flooding overwhelmed the water treatment infrastructure in Jackson, Mississippi ("EPA determines water in Jackson, Mississippi, is safe to drink two months after treatment plant failure," CNN), calling attention to how racism leads to underfunding of urban needs, but also the reality that there are billions of dollars in unfunded needs for improvements to existing sewer, stormwater, and water treatment infrastructure.

A man rides his motorcycle through a flooded street in the Melrose Park neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale on Friday. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Last Friday, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reported on high-tide induced flooding there ("Heavy rain during high tide swamps Broward roads ahead of weekend cold front").

Residents on the west side of Salt Lake City were flooded out a couple weeks ago, after the strongest rain event in 120 years--rain also made entry into the foundation wall of our bedroom ("The Oct. 4 rainstorm is just one example of the severe weather in our future," Salt Lake Tribune, "Salt Lake City mayor issues emergency declaration in response to weekend flooding," KSL-TV).

People clean up on Sunday, after Saturday’s historic rain caused significant flooding in a Rose Park neighborhood. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall declared a state of emergency over the flooding late Monday. Wesley Barton, KSL-TV

10. Systems of local government finance, created when the US was growing, are hard pressed to meet demands for new infrastructure needs induced by climate change ("The real lesson from Flint is about municipal finance," 2016).